ENO: Angel’s Bone

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ENO: Angel’s Bone

By Du Yun and Royce Vavrek

Aviva Studios, 12 May 2026

Angel’s Bone at the Aviva Studios, Manchester

This is about as violent, visceral and vicious as an opera as can be.

We are shown a marriage on the rocks, the man and woman at loggerheads, dissatisfied with how their relationship has drifted along for too long. They are about ready to cut lumps out of each other, to tear at the tendrils of the heart.

That’s the situation just before two angels plummet and fall to earth, setting in train a series of baleful consequences. Though, in a way, the angels offer salvation. For the man and the woman (and the woman especially, it has to be said) certain sexual desires that had lain quite still, never having been fully articulated, flare into being. They realise that they are partners, these two, husband and wife till the last. And the angels are prey, targets of desire and violence. Perhaps their marriage can be saved? But at what cost?

Du Yun’s discordant score drives the drama, which is presented on a stage in the round (think: the Royal Exchange), with the audience standing and able to walk around. There is also video, projected ahead, in case your view is obstructed. It is possible to sit and watch the opera in an accessible viewing platform, though places are limited and need to be booked in advance.

Here the angels were frail, vulnerable and subject to suffering. They were not Rilkean angels, above the fray and apart from human turmoil, or even rebel angels come to that. There was no sense that these were sanctified beings, meant to be feared or worshipped.

This was quite unnerving, because already a taboo had been broken. What gave rise to a feeling of trepidation, also, was the power imbalance. The human beings were forceful in wielding power, whether that be by coercion or violence. They brought about very real harm.

With Angel’s Bone you quite often found yourself looking in a mirror and not liking what you see. Because for the angels here, human beings must surely appear as monsters.

This is about as violent, visceral and vicious as an opera as can be. With Royce Vavrek’s libretto, the black drama unfolds and it pulls no punches at all.

Details of future productions of Angel’s Bone can be found here.

Heat Seeker: Exposed

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Heat Seeker: Exposed

By Charles Ardai

Artwork by Ace Continuado

Titan Comics, 2026

Heat seeker under fire.

Here Dahlia Racers is being chased by a journalist called Jacq, aka ‘The Bitch with a Bone’, who aims to expose her and her clients. Those clients, some of them anyway, are serious criminals, heavy villains. They respond by trying to kill them both, Dahlia as well as Jacq, in order to avoid exposure.

Understandably, Dahlia goes on the run, donning a disguise as is her custom. But her cover is soon blown. She goes on to fake her own death, but that does not hold up for long.

Now recondite shenanigans ensue and there is an echoing bridge that not all may see. Dahlia is driven darker and deeper. What is special about this episode is that an intrepid young woman, so well versed in taking the heat for others, finds herself under fire.

Jacq is a contemporary baddie, a vlogger with a malicious streak who creates mayhem for, well, likes on social media. It feels a bit too on the nose, this latest adventure.

There is uncertainty whether the blow will fall soon or late, but it must be avoided at all costs, because others, and not least Dahlia’s girlfriend Evie, a mutant mother, and her daughter Rosaline, are at risk too.

Heat Seeker: Exposed presents the reader with another fine spectacle of infinite uproar, a tumultuous parade of seemingly endless contradiction, until normal service and an Eden-like calm resumes (momentarily, no doubt) at the close. The ride in between times, aided by Charles Ardai’s whirlwind script and Ace Continuado’s blazing, blaring artwork, is as compelling as a green-eyed redhead in distressed khaki. That is to say, as compelling as Dahlia Racers herself.

The publisher’s description of Heat Seeker: Exposed can be read here.

Namibia: Episode 3

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Namibia: Episode 3

By Leo and Rodolphe

Artwork by Bertrand Marchal

Cinebook, 2016

The Messiah is my sister.

A new strand is introduced in this episode.

We are in Chicago, again the late ‘40s, where a preacher at an evangelistic church named in honour of the Sons of Ezekiel discovers that he can levitate. Maybe he is a new Messiah?

Meanwhile Simpson, a British agent enroute to meet Kathy Austin, is killed in Cairo. Someone or something (sentience is difficult to discern) takes his place.

When you spy Nazis dressed in lederhosen (what else?) engaged in a gunfight with extra-terrestrials, well, you simply take it in your stride. Later they, the Germans, are found dead, a crime scene expertly staged.

What is going on? Kathy and her uncle (he is the head of MI5) head back to Namibia, to the mine at the centre of the mystery. Perhaps they will find the answers there.

The publisher’s description of Namibia: Episode 3 can be read here.

Hawkmoon: The Battle of Kamarg

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Hawkmoon: The Battle of Kamarg

Script by Jérôme Le Gris

Artwork by Benôit Dellac and Didier Poli

Titan Comics, 2025

Ancient magic and corkscrew technology.

Here Jérôme Le Gris’s script and Benoît Dellac and Didier Poli’s artwork achieve what you may well have thought impossible. Together, the trio bring Michael Moorcock’s universe, an alternative world of ancient magic and corkscrew technology, wonderfully to life. Amidst baroque courts, tarnished aristocracy, seedy magicians and renegade soldiers vie for power and control.

Everything leads up to a battle scene that is epic, bloody, terrible in its carnage, cruelly drawn out, savage and yet heroic too. It seems to go on forever.

Strange towers protect Kamarg, whose opulent palaces speak of wealth and power. Whether this is due to magic or technology is a moot point.

Before then we see the Duke, yes this is Dorian Hawkmoon, enter Kamarg in order to abduct Yisselda, daughter of the Count. It is assumed that the Duke is a good guy and it is only the black jewel that makes him behave like a bad one, but is this really so? The jewel’s power can be nullified it seems, but only temporarily.

It is certain, anyroads, that the Granbretan Empire is determined to take Kamarg. Their armies, led by Baron Meliadus, are on the march. King-Emperor Huon may look like a babe with an umbilical cord attached, but his power is immense. And there is a certain Kalan who should not be underestimated.

At the end the Duke goes off to seek a learned man who might heal him. Yisselda is besmitten by this noble mediocrity, curiously enough (think: Prince Harry), and does not want him to leave. But maybe it is a quest that will succeed. So many fates hang in the balance at the close.

The publisher’s description of Hawkmoon: The Battle of Kamarg can be read here.

Namibia: Episode 2

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Namibia: Episode 2

By Leo and Rodolphe

Artwork by Bertrand Marchal

Cinebook, 2016

Danger immediate and far.

We are back in London, where a woman mourning her dead son, on returning home from the pub, spies a young man who looks exactly like him. He runs away, but she pursues him. After a frantic chase, he is cornered and she embraces him. Her dearly departed son, miraculously alive. And he crumbles into small stones, then dust.

Bertrand Marchal’s artwork is stupendously good here. There are 16 panels on pages 9 and 10 which convey a meeting in a London office. The panels show a continual change of perspective and point of view. It is joyous, the way he depicts setting and character.

What is clear is that an illegal operation is due to take place in a faraway African country from a red-brick office building in London, where outside we see Piccadilly Circus, Westminster Bridge, Big Ben and (I think) Blackfriars Bridge along the Thames.

Faraway in Namibia, giant ants are on the rampage; the native population is assailed by a debilitating malady; and Kathy Austin confronts Nazis in lederhosen. Following a Commando raid at a disused mine, Kathy and Major Rowley discover an underground research laboratory.

At a London townhouse, there is an insistent phone call in the early hours, awakening a Knight of the Realm and relaying calamitous news from a foreign land. Was there ever a time when danger didn’t feel close to home?

The publisher’s description of Namibia: Episode 2 can be read here.

Amazonia: Episode 5

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Amazonia: Episode 5

By Leo and Rodolphe

Artwork by Bertrand Marchal

Cinebook, 2026

What a spy believes, she sees.

When Kathy Austin takes a plane back to Old Blighty she has, sad to say, only a partial understanding of who Jo was and how he came to be. There are things we know that she does not.

We know that Jo has two brains; it is this that gives him telekinetic powers. And we know a few other things as well. At the close of the war, he went to Amazonia from Germany, travelling by submarine along with a cargo of gold. The submarine was abandoned in the Amazon tributaries, because the Allies were on its trail, and the top brass made for the nearest city, leaving Jo for the natives to find. Later they set out to retrieve the gold.

Most loose ends are tied up in this final episode, though the detour to Roswell, with lurid details about the UFO crash and cover up, was slightly perplexing. Jo was an extra-terrestrial, it would seem, but how did he find himself…?

Once again, as with previous episodes, Bertrand Marchal’s artwork goes above and beyond. It is deftly drawn and deliciously inviting throughout. A door is held open. An adventure awaits.

The publisher’s description of Amazonia: Episode 5 can be read here.

Rebel Moon: Nemesis

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Rebel Moon: Nemesis

Script by Gail Simone

Artwork by Frederico Bertoni

Titan Comics, 2026

Nemesis is born.

Rebel Moon: Nemesis shows us a Universe enslaved, worlds beset by coercive control and ablaze with violence, a dystopian future where an all-seeing and all-powerful empire (the Imperium) holds sway.

One day the Imperium takes an interest in Katan’s small village, a village which lies in an out of the way country on a distant planet. There is a reason why it is targeted, no doubt; their technology has many tentacles. Whether by accident or design, Katan’s father and mother are killed. She vows revenge, writing up a kill list of the guilty. Once every person on the list has been dealt with, their name is crossed out…

The story is gripping but, much more than that, it was the ragged universe rendered real by Frederico Bertoni’s gritty artwork that thrilled me most of all. What you have is a technologically advanced ‘civilisation’ where those representing the Imperium are strictly regimented and minutely disciplined: they are little more than machines themselves, alongside the stealthy spaceships and weapons that can (and do) cause carnage. You never feel that this is a prosperous or kindly universe, or a paradise of plenty. It is mean and nasty. Those oppressed by the Imperium live in poverty and are subject to all manner of cruelty. They suffer what they must.

At the end, as the last evildoer’s name is struck off, Katan feels a curious emptiness. Why so, since her revenge is surely complete? Then a desperate woman from a besieged village comes to her in need of help; she has established some kind of reputation. When she decides to help, becoming a kind of gun for hire, the reason for her dissatisfaction is plain. She realises that there will always be injustice for as long as the Imperium exists.

In that moment, when Katan discovers her mission in life, the destruction of the Imperium, Nemesis is truly born.

The publisher’s description of Rebel Moon: Nemesis can be read here.

Opera North: The Marriage of Figaro

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Opera North: The Marriage of Figaro

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Lowry, 12 March 2026

Opera North: The Marriage of Figaro. Photo by Tristram Kenton

A plea for mercy is granted.

This was a marvellously entertaining and ultimately rather moving production of what is without doubt the greatest comic opera ever written. The secret of its success (an open secret, yet still a mystery) is Mozart’s score, which is of such good humour. You laugh helplessly at the human comedy and then, seemingly without warning, there are songs that break your heart.

The mechanics of the farce are magnificently constructed. In a single day Figaro (Liam James Karal) outwits his master the Count Almaviva (James Newby); Cherubino (Hongni Wu), the Count’s page, hides under the stairs and leaps from a window; Countess Almaviva (Gabriella Reyes) disguises herself as her maid Susanna (Claire Lees), who happens also to be Figaro’s betrothed; and most if not all end up with a strange but not necessarily unfamiliar bedfellow. Misunderstandings lead to humiliations and often reversals, until the whole edifice shakes and totters. Yet it never collapses into outright slapstick, because these people never quite become caricatures. Mozart’s music reveals the soul within and presents us with real people. There is a psychological realism at the base of the music.

And what people they all are. Figaro’s Se vuol ballare seethes and simmers with resentment towards his master. It is a call to battle on a par with Ka Mate. As for the Count, he is no pantomime villain but an honourable man undone by entitlement, granted just enough dignity that his final humiliation stings and bites. Susanna is a wonderful woman: down to earth, clear-eyed, canny, but liable to fly off the handle. But the person who really captures your heart is the Countess. In the magnificent arias Porgi amor and Dove sono she expresses a forlorn grief over a marriage grown cold and distant. These are poignant remembrances of what love once was.

Such is its magnificence, Mozart’s score allows us to see these people in all their human complexity. The Act II finale, fifteen crazy minutes where the plot spirals into chaos, is a dramatic miracle, each succeeding note shifting the emphasis with cool precision. We are absurd creatures, are we not? it seems to say. Yet in the final scene, when the Countess takes it upon herself to forgive her faithless husband, Mozart sets the moment in music of such hushed beauty that the hilarious comedy is quite forgotten and you become witness to something like the Day of Judgment. Yes, we are absurd creatures but somehow capable of divine actions.

Details of future Opera North performances of The Marriage of Figaro can be found here.

ENO: Cosi fan tutte

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ENO: Cosi fan tutte

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Bridgewater Hall, 27 February 2026

Experiments in love.

This was an entertaining and ultimately an heartening production of Mozart’s great opera. As always when any classic is well done, it seemed to have a contemporary feel: it spoke directly to us.

While Così fan tutte is an ambivalent work, ultimately I think it comes down on the side of acceptance. On one interpretation, it takes a cynical view of womankind and the inconstancy of men and women’s affections. But on another (more foundational?) viewing, there is a call for understanding and an acceptance of human frailty. Into the human heart, love will always take root… and isn’t it wonderful, after all, that the heart can love more than one?

It was a semi-staged production, this Così fan tutte, meaning that the singers were in costume but there was no stage set as such. Instead, the orchestra were on stage with the cast and there was a choir, behind and above the stage, that joined in at certain moments. Unusually, the opera was sung in English.

In a sense, what we were presented with was an experiment in love, with Don Alfonso (Andrew Foster-Williams) as a mad scientist and the ladies Fiordiligli (Lucy Crowe) and Dorabella (Taylor Raven) as his unwitting subjects. Among many fine performances, it was Ailish Tynan as Despina who especially stood out for me. She was more woman than lady, with a formidable knowledge of the ways of the world and the wayward heart. And she could have given any hard-boiled femme fatale a run for her money.

This was a wonderful production of a work that explores various attitudes towards love, ranging from the romantic to the cynical, before plumbing for a not so simple acceptance of one another as the best bet. It hits the target, piercing the heart as before.

Details of future ENO productions can be found here.

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

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West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Großer Saal, Musikverein

22 February 2026

Fate and freedom.

Right, let’s be straight with you, the orchestra founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said over a century ago gave us a proper night out. No messing, not one little bit. They began with Wagner (is he still banned in Israel?), the sumptuous Overture to the nowadays neglected opera Rienzi, but really hit their stride with Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony. You could tell then that they were the real deal.

The Eighth was a curious choice in retrospect, being in many respects the odd one out in Beethoven’s symphonic canon: compact, irreverent, almost taking the mickey out of itself. Where the Seventh swaggers, the Eighth winks and cajoles. The great Zubin Mehta, displaying immense courage on the night (he is a stand-up guy in more ways than one) kept it tight and fizzing, the second movement’s clockwork metronome proving a genuine delight, and the finale landed like a killer punch or a brilliant punchline. The playing was crisp, flavoursome, full of personality, as exuberant as Beethoven’s score. He must have been having the time of his life when he wrote it.

All of which made the contrast with Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony so striking, because that man (surely) was absolutely not having the time of his life.

But here’s the connection that hit you right in the heart. Both symphonies are, at their core, about fate and freedom, except they come at it from opposite directions. Beethoven bats fate away with a shrug and a chuckle, dances and dallies with tragedy, refuses to be crushed. Tchaikovsky, opening his Fourth with that shattering brass fanfare, the ‘fate motif’ as he called it himself, is haunted by circumstance and contingency. He can’t shake it; he is a trapped man. The whole symphony is a wrestle between doleful resignation and a desperate, almost manic joy. And the finale, all that furious folk-dance energy, is not triumphant so much as defiant. It’s a man running very fast and hoping fate can’t catch up, but knowing in his heart of hearts that it will. He is lost.

The orchestra rose to the occasion in every respect. The strings in the slow movement were gorgeous, tender and true, and the brass in the outer movements had proper heft without ever going over the top. The scherzo, all pizzicato strings, floated weightless.

Put the two work together and you’ve got a dialogue between two titans. Beethoven saying life is worthwhile, even in its darkest moments; and Tchaikovsky urging you to live, despite it all. On reflection, perhaps they are in agreement, after all.

This was a wonderful concert, commensurate with the the august hall in which it was held. The program was well thought out, the performance on the night was superb.

Details of future concerts at the Musikverein can be found here.

Return to Skull Island, Volume 1

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Return to Skull Island, Volume 1

Script by Simon Furman

Artwork by Christopher Jones

Titan Comics, 2026

Paradise for some.

Billed as ‘the official continuation of the the hit Netflix show’, Return to Skull Island as a graphic novel (the first volume of many, perhaps) is likewise prodigiously entertaining. As prodigious, indeed, as Skull Island itself, a far-off land populated by outsized and prehistoric-era creatures. We have Kong, a giant ape, together with a Kraken and a wondrous beauty named Yuggoth that is seemingly made of mushrooms (I kid you not); and more besides.

As an adventure yarn, it fits squarely into the genre founded by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and mined by many films, TV series and comics since then (and not least by the great Edgar P. Jacobs in The U Ray).

Here there are lashings of humour; and it is a very knowing kind of humour to boot. The main question, mind, is whether Skull Island is heaven or hell, dream or nightmare. Answers vary, as is often the case.

For Charlie and his dad, fighting to survive and lucky to be in one piece at the end of it all, it is clearly a hell hole. They are itching to be off and away. Not so for Annie, mind, who is disconsolate in a modern American city when we first meet her. She sees Skull Island as a hope and a paradise, so makes her way back with Irene, her trusting mum, in tow. At the end she is where she wants to be, in a blessed place.

The publisher’s description of Return to Skull Island, Volume 1 can be read here.

Dickson Mbi: Tellus

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Dickson Mbi: Tellus

The Lowry, 9 February 2026

Wounded Wanderer.

Instead of offering answers to the various ills that ail us, you know those easy answers to big questions that are so popular nowadays, Tellus sets out a path that leads from struggle to transformation.

There is a lone dancer, weighed down it seems by unseen burdens, but he is not in fact entirely alone. Those others that sometimes accompany him help to support and shape his journey. But it is clear that he must change.

With complex percussion and piquant chant lighting the way, fuelling the dance, the man possesses a ferocious drive to reach some end, and that right from the get-go. As well, mind, there’s a real sense of peril. This is a journey he must make; he wouldn’t do it otherwise.

We can only know really of one world, yet we live in and are impacted by several: that is the sort of notion that occurs to you as you watch this wounded wanderer, become caught up in the drama of this thunderous show. All our knowledge, even if we think of it as complete and perfect, will prove to be inadequate in dealing with what life will throw at us.

Here we have travail and turmoil yet also, at the end, a shudder of overcoming and a fragile swagger. A tremulous path leads off into the distance.

Dickson Mbi: Tellus has a too short run at The Lowry. Details of future performances can be found here and also here.

MÁM

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MÁM

By Teaċ Daṁsa

Choreography by Michael Keegan-Dolan

The Lowry, 4 February 2026

Heavenly wake.

We at first see a girl-child in a white dress, face to face with a horned beast holding an accordion. They are joined by ten vigilants, five men and five women, all formally attired, dressed in dark colours. The accordion player removes his mask and strikes up a beat, and the assembled vigilants begin to dance. The young girl watches on for now.

A little later the accordion player is joined by a full ensemble: a violinist, cellist, pianist, drummer and guitar player. The mood deepen and darkens, yet it lightens as well, becomes both earthy and transcendent. The young girl joins in the dance. None will cease dancing until the end.

That the show holds your attention throughout is a wonder not easily explained. As the music rings changes from pounding percussion to melancholy melody and even an effusive jazz-funk, so the dancers respond accordingly. That’s part of the explanation, the felicitous blend of music and dance. There is raw grief, sombre reflection and a desperate, inconsolable longing. Yet there is space for playfulness and delight and humour too, not to mention (here you imagine the drink taking hold) bawdy abandon. Another thing to note is the way your perspective seems to change. Now you are watching a wake, the mourning of a beloved child; next your eyes follow the journey of a young soul, her troubled and confused ascent to heaven.

MÁM, a perfect amalgam of music and dance, is a show that sweeps you away. It must be seen and experienced.

This, the second of two shows at The Lowry, kicks off a UK tour which sees MÁM appearing at many venues throughout the UK in February and early March. Details of future performances can be found here.

The Bank

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The Bank 1 – The Waterloo Insider

By Pierre Boisserie and Philippe Guillaume

Illustrated by Julien Maffre

Cinebook, 2025

The Bank 2 – The Emigrés’s Billion

By Pierre Boisserie and Philippe Guillaume

Illustrated by Julien Maffre

Cinebook, 2025

High society rendered grand.

Ambition is the spur in Pierre Boisserie and Philippe Guillaume’s historical drama, commencing in the early years of the nineteenth century.

It begins in London in 1815, Britain being at war with France. Two French aristocrats, Charlotte and her brother Christian, are living on their uppers, having crossed the Channel following the Revolution. Opportunities for advancement are few and far between, though. When we first cast eyes on them Charlotte is a woman of pleasure and Christian could fairly be described as a lowly factotum.

And when a chance arises to make a killing on the stock market, Charlotte seizes it with both hands, hesitation be damned. All well and good, but she must flee Britain as a consequence, leaving her brother in the lurch. Poor Christian is arrested and thrown in jail.

After this gross act of betrayal, animosity between brother and sister is pretty much baked in; and it blooms into rosy life in Paris, some ten years later, when Christian returns to France to claim the family land and fortune. From this point on, family conflict intensifies and business intrigue proliferates.

Key, convincing historical detail adds to the force of the melodrama: Charlotte and her family (she at one point marries) make a go of it in Algeria, Christian ponders whether to invest in the railways. The plot is complex and convoluted, and secrets and lies remain uncovered right up until the end.

Each of Julien Maffre’s panels is a joy to behold, a thing of beauty. His artwork pushes the story forward constantly, yet at a leisurely nineteenth century canter. He shows us, at various times, murky London streets and Parisian palaces bathed in light. Here is high society rendered grand, the privileged at play; here too are squalid hovels where the poor subsist. Our two siblings, Charlotte and Christian, have known them both.

The publisher’s description of The Bank 1 – The Waterloo Insider can be read here.

The publisher’s description of The Bank 2 – The Émigrés’ Billion can be read here.

Largo Winch 5 and 6: See Venice… and Die

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Largo Winch 05: See Venice…

By Francq and Van Hamme

Cinebook, 2010

Largo Winch 06: … And Die

By Francq and Van Hamme

Cinebook, 2010

Venetian vendettas.

Things are kicking off in the once great imperial city of Venice. Charity, Largo’s girlfriend, goes there to stay with Domenica, an up-and-coming sculptor who she had known in her earlier days. At boarding school the two girls had been ardent friends. Their bad luck now means that they fall foul of a revolutionary group involved in the assassination of bankers and industrial magnates. This group makes an audacious attempt to abduction them both, for reasons that are murky at first sight. Statuesque Domenica fights them off and escapes, but demure Charity is viciously whisked away.

That in brief is the perilous situation obtaining when Largo arrives in Venice from New York, little suspecting that a leading Venetian family (they are nobles, so not Mafioso, not at all) has allied itself with one of his more unscrupulous business rivals. Venice is a rude, crude city built on a dead lagoon and, as killings and kidnappings proliferate, Largo has to tread very carefully indeed to keep his head above water. Still, there is no reason why he shouldn’t deny himself entertainment and diversion. Soon a masked ball will be held.

Taken together, these two volumes make for a thrilling, self-contained adventure. Van Hamme’s signature is a byword for political intrigue, explosive action and complex character portrayal but what makes the tale really shimmer and glimmer is Francq’s beautiful artwork. It is absolutely gorgeous to behold, whether he is showing us the benighted canals of Venice, the interior splendour of its grand palaces, or a swashbuckling sword fight featuring Largo clad in aristocratic garb (this, when he attends the masked ball). By way of warning, I should add that there are certain risqué scenes too…

The publisher’s description of Largo Winch 05: See Venice… can be read here.

The publisher’s description of Largo Winch 06: …And Die can be read here.

Namibia: Episode 1

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Namibia: Episode 1

By Leo and Rodolphe

Artwork by Bertrand Marchal

Cinebook, 2016

Who is Kathy’s Namibian nemesis?

We are in Namibia, once a German colony, shortly after the end of World War Two. By chance a photographer spots what looks like a familiar face: Hermann Göring, no less. He takes a picture, and it finds its way back to London.

In short order MI5 send Kathy Austin out to investigate, where she meets up with Cowley, an old stick in the mud, but a man who does, however, know the country like the back of his hand. He steers her right; and he needs to, for from the moment Kathy arrives in the country, she is being watched. German agents are on the prowl.

Out of the blue, Kathy receives a secret missive asking her to urgently meet up at a certain rendezvous. It is a dodgy locale and may well be a trap, but Kathy goes anyway. The man who meets her is killed. Things are getting a bit dicey.

Elsewhere we see that Namibian natives are prematurely aging and starving, giant insects are ravaging vital crops and NGOs are out and about trying to understand what is going on. Oh, and Göring, if it is in fact he, meets a grisly end.

This opening episode gives you a lot to think about, plenty of information to digest, and I must confess that I was alternately perplexed and enchanted, lost in forlorn, treacherous land. At the close I was left with one overriding question.

Who is Kathy’s Namibian nemesis?

The publisher’s description of Namibia: Episode 1 can be read here.

The Children of the Dead

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The Children of the Dead

By Elfriede Jelinek

Translated from the German by Gitta Honegger

Yale University Press, 2025

Dark Tourism.

Elfriede Jelinek’s formidable fiction may be the boldest, most uncompromising novel in contemporary European literature; it is an epic zombie story that’s at root about Austria’s refusal to fully face its Nazi past. For those willing to stick with it, and it is a fiendishly difficult read, the novel offers a confrontation that’s at once intellectually demanding and viscerally unsettling.

The prose has an extreme maximalism: paragraphs run for pages without breaking, sentences loop back on themselves through digression and free association, there is a constant wordplay. It is intentionally disorienting, you suspect, a way of mirroring the zombified state of her characters who stumble through the world in perpetual dissociation.

We follow three main undead characters (Edgar, Gudrun and Karin) but there is a refusal to give us access to their inner lives. They’re simply mute, rotting bodies wandering through an Alpine terrain, abject and empty of reflection.

Constantly, Jelinek’s sentences explode with dark humour and nightmarish imagery. Her language crackles with energy, even when describing rot and decay. Honegger’s translation captures Jelinek’s habit of going off on tangents, where one thought spirals into nested riffs that resist any straightforward reading. As a reader, you are always off guard, unsettled and uncomfortable.

Jelinek’s vision of Austria is as a gorgeous slaughterhouse: an Alpine paradise built on mass graves, where postcard-perfect mountain views and historic castles cloak catastrophic violence. Tourists enjoy a nice holiday, oblivious of the Holocaust victims buried under their feet.

A small digression, just to place The Children of the Dead in the context of Austrian society. In the Summer of 2024, I spent a week or so in Eisenerz, a mining town in the Austrian state of Styria. My intention was to get away from the usual tourist spots and to use the town as a base to walk portions of the Styrian Iron Trail. There is an immense church dedicated to Saint Oswald overlooking the town, and iron is apparently still mined from the mountains around: a train with loaded wagons regularly trundled around a raised rail track. I noted that Napalm Records, a label specialising in heavy metal, is headquartered there. And a few miles away, reached by a gloriously upward winding hiking trail with stunning views all around, is Leopoldsteinersee, a picturesque lake below a mountain where you can eat wurst and drink Gosser beer. As the Second World War ended, about 200 Hungarian Jews were killed by the Eisenerz Volkssturm and buried here. My point is that Jelinek’s novel, while fantastical ,is an attempt to grapple with an underlying reality.

I found The Children of the Dead a complex, difficult read but the effort was well rewarded in the end. We are in the same world as Jelinek’s Greed but this earlier novel feels chillier, less accessible and more remote, much more precarious. This novel is a Geotrail rather than a Wanderweg, and it is a trail where the path has become eroded or sometimes been replaced by ravines, and where the terrain has taken on a new danger.

The publisher’s description of The Children of the Dead can be read here

Conan the Barbarian, Volume 6: A Nest Of Serpents

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Conan the Barbarian, Volume 6: A Nest Of Serpents

Script by Jim Zub

Artwork by Fernando Dagnino

Titan Comics, 2026

Sinister menace.

You are immersed in this barbaric world right from the start, transported at once to a strange land.

It begins sedately enough. Conan and band of friendly tribesmen enter a desolate border town, where they are enthusiastically greeted. The men have just returned from a quest, Conan even has a rescued damsel in tow, and, being bone tired, they are grateful for the generous bountiful hospitality. Soon, mind, all the bowing and scraping begins to grate and Conan becomes suspicious. He smells a rat and is careful not to eat too much, to drink not at all. For in order to understand what is actually going on in this town, he needs to keep a clear head.

It is a trap. His companions are being imprisoned. And he too is overpowered eventually. All are caged, until a Stygian woman, a sorceress by name of Athyr-Bast, collects them. Using her renegade spells she has subjugated the town. They must, as tribute, provide her with slaves.

Conan is taken to Kheshatta, centre of the Stygian Empire, where he is put to work as a gladiator, killing for entertainment.

Conan fights for Athyr-Bast against Thoth-Amon’s champion, Thoth-Amon being the top sorcerer, Set’s chosen. The Cimmerian goes by the gladiator name of Amra of Akbatana. I like Athyr-Bast, she is a girl after my own heart, but Conan is not so keen.

The gladiatorial scenes are well rendered, but there is more. It is a sinister city, Kheshatta, and Fernando Dagnino’s artwork depicts its shadows as pregnant with menace. You don’t know, even, whether what you fear belongs to this world or another.

Zula, a warrior known to Conan, hooks up with him and together they seek out Set the Serpent God and his worshippers. There is a final mystery. Below the city, in subterranean caverns, human-serpent hybrids are being bred. As the two slay them, the city becomes engulfed in chaos.

Conan somehow escapes and is a wandering warrior once more… altogether a very satisfying adventure.

The publisher’s description of Conan the Barbarian, Volume 6: A Nest Of Serpents can be read here.

Alpha 4: Sanctions

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Alpha 4: Sanctions

By Jigounov and Mythic

Cinebook, 2010

Alpha in Beta mode.

When the story opens, it is the year 2000, dawn of a new millennium. Alpha and his colleagues, all top-notch intelligence operatives, have been given a rather humdrum assignment. A Russian delegation has arrived in Washington, and they have been asked to act as escort. To keep them company and show them the sights. Mind, it is a choice opportunity for covert surveillance, best not to let it go to waste…

All proceeds calmly until, well, until the killings begin. One by one, certain ex-CIA agents are being targeted and, at the scene of each killing, a griffin (in the form of a medallion or statuette) has been left as a calling card. We learn that Griffin was the code-name of a Soviet agent who had defected to the USA in 1987, but been callously betrayed, sent back whence he came, to smoothly end the Cold War. That he had been sacrificed in the service of a greater peace. And it is those CIA agents that reneged on the promise of sanctuary for Griffin that are now being killed.

The question naturally arises: what if someone in the Russian delegation is wreaking revenge? Someone related to Griffin, or maybe Griffin himself? (Assuming, that is, that he is still alive?)

It is a crisply written murder mystery, this episode, the devilish denouement disguised right up until the end. Jigounov does not cheat, mind, because all the information required to solve the crimes is provided upfront, but that is clear only in retrospect, plot and misdirection being so skilfully deployed. There are sly deceptions withal, but those are simply newly emancipated Russians sampling Western freedoms.

The publisher’s description of Alpha 4: Sanctions can be read here.

Gun Honey 1-3 Slipcase Set

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Gun Honey 1-3 Slipcase Set

By Charles Ardai

Artwork by Ang Hor Kheng

Titan Comics, 2025

Gun Honey

Joanna Tan provides a specialist service for hitmen and assassins. She can place a gun in any location, ready for use. If you recall the scene in The Godfather where Michael carries out a couple of killings in an Italian restaurant, you’ll understand her business model. Michael retrieves his gun from the cistern, a gun Joanna would have placed it there.

This Slipcase Set collects together the first three volumes (and maybe the first twelve issues) of the Gun Honey comic, and the first volume is foundational. It tells us who Joanna is, how she was made, where she came from. Her childhood was spent growing up on the streets of Singapore and that is where her family, most of them anyway, were murdered. Note that this is also a tale of vengeance.

In the course of the story, Joanna changes quite radically. When we first see her, facilitating a hit on a crime boss ensconced on a yacht off a Greek island, she’s cool and indifferent. It’s just a job for her, so why care what harm guns do? Especially when it’s only the bad guys who get hurt. By the end, mind, she not only acknowledges that the weapons she brings to the table kill. She is willing and able to use them herself.

What Joanna comes to realise is that it is her bosses (her clients, the ones putting her to work) who were her family’s enemies. And she decides therefore to shift her allegiance.

Charles Ardai’s tale in the first volume is well-structured, full of intrigue and revelation, pacy and exciting throughout. And he even has time for the odd literary joke: when Joanna is required to smuggle a gun into a prison, she places it in a holed-out copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Ang Hor Kheng’s artwork is not only gorgeous to look at (Joanna in a cat-suit is a wondrous sight to see), it superbly serves the narrative. His panels are not showy but there’s plenty of variation when needed. They have a niggly depth that makes your eyes swerve and dance.

Gun Honey: Blood for Blood

The second volume sees Joanna Tan go up against a formidable female assassin in Filippa Sterling. She is a woman hell-bent on revenge: determined to kill the drug dealers that caused the death of her parents, determined, also, to avenge the death of the person who took their place, Lydia Morse, her mentor and virtual guardian. And since Tan had a hand in the latter killing, Sterling sets her sights on her. Blood, precious blood, will be spilt.

It is an intricate tale of intrigue and violence that ranges across America before journeying forth to Europe, touching down in Italy and Monaco. Somehow, you do feel for Filippa Sterling. She is a monster, yes, but one made by circumstances. There are compelling reasons why she acts as ruthlessly as she does. As Auden put it, ‘Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.’ In Filippa’s favour, you have to concede that at least her violence is focussed.

At the end, Brook has left the clandestine government organisation of which he was a part and he, together with Joanna, is on the run. He is now an outlaw too.

I greatly enjoyed the melding of Charles Ardai’s neo-noir yarn with Ang Hor Kheng’s marvellous artwork. You can expect to see underwater fighting sequences, elaborate pursuits through city streets at night, explosive car chases, fiery gun fights and lengthy detailed interrogations in darkened rooms with a single light bulb. And there is, quite unexpectedly, a lovely rendering of the Duomo in Milan.

Time to chalk up another bull’s eye, for this second volume hits the target.

Gun Honey: Collision Course

There is explosive action right from the get-go in this third volume that, according to my understanding, follows on from where another comic, Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series, left off.

Joanna Tan and Brook Barrow are still on the run, have been for about a year, and Gorman is missing, presumed dead (though some of us know what happened to him: he fell out with the demure Sarah Claride).

Again, we are in Charles Ardai’s cosmopolitan underworld, where there exists an eco-system of specialists, men and women with specific skills and niche functions. We are introduced to Hiroshi Yamato, a Japanese crime boss who provides a kind of insurance policy. He keeps incriminating evidence in a secure vault. The files are deposited for safekeeping by his clients, criminals who believe their lives are under threat, Yamato guaranteeing to release the files if he doesn’t hear from a client within a year.

It seems that Brook is a client of Yamato’s (maybe Gorman was too), and those that want Joanna and Barrow dead now turn their ire on him.

As Japanese crime gangs go after each other, Joanna and Barrow get caught up in the crossfire, culminating in a showdown in the sands of the Gobi Desert. Even then, the mayhem does not end, for the theatre of conflict shifts to Paris, where there are perils aplenty. Through each twist and turn, Ang Hor Kheng’s artwork brings the action and intrigue gloriously to life. What a world: bloody carnage, high-tech, venal ambition.

For her next job, we learn that Joanna Tan may be asked to deposit a gun in the Kremlin, in the office of a certain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. That will really be something, if it happens.

The publisher’s description of Gun Honey 1-3 Slipcase Set can be read here.

Lady S. 4 – A Mole in D.C.

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Lady S. 4 – A Mole in D.C.

By Aymond and Van Hamme

Cinebook, 2014

Once lost, trust cannot entirely return.

There is a complicated web of political intrigue here, and at its centre a power-hungry predator with poisonous tentacles.

The President of the United States of America, in this world, is a woman by name of Donna Freeman; and she is in an intimate relationship with Suzie’s father (or, strictly speaking, stepfather) James Fitzroy. Sinister political forces want to undermine President Freeman and they undertake to do this by smearing Fitzroy’s daughter, Suzie (our Lady S.), hoping thereby that the suspicion and dirt will cascade upwards.

It begins with a murder, evidence found at the scene (doctored, of course) suggesting that the culprit is a foreign agent at large in Washington. Each carefully laid clue leads to Suzie’s door, she is in the frame as the fall gal, the enemy within. And she must forthrightly fight for her own precious life, never mind her erstwhile father’s name and reputation.

I was mightily entertained by this action-packed episode (wholly self-contained, incidentally), which at one point sees Suzie desperately fending off a deadly FBI agent in a craggy desert landscape. She survives, but her relationship with her father, or at any rate with the man who adopted her, takes a bit of a battering. It is irrevocably changed. Once lost, trust cannot entirely return.

Suzie’s life in America has ended and she leaves for Europe and pastures new.

The publisher’s description of Lady S. 4 – A Mole in D.C. can be read here.

Amazonia: Episode 4

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Amazonia: Episode 4

By Leo and Rodolphe

Artwork by Bertrand Marchal

Cinebook, 2025

Saturday matinee thrills.

Slowly the pieces are falling into place and the mystery of the tall, mute, pale creature is being revealed. But we are not there quite yet. We see him here, however, right at the beginning. He is a curiosity, an exhibit at a freak show in Dresden in 1943. A Nazi bigwig spots him and acquires him for a doctor friend, maybe because he seems like decent guinea pig material.

Then the story shifts to the Amazon, some 6 years later, the German agents (including a doctor colleague) stranded and the tall, pale creature (now called Jo) coming to their aid (though there is an intimation that ulterior motives are at play). At this point, also, Kathy Austin and her army officer friend are lost in the jungle and looking for a way back to civilisation. They find the river and build a raft but then stumble into the submarine that the Germans are looking for.

There is more as well: Oscar and Clyde are in the USA, being interviewed by the FBI. Putting two and two together, it looks like the sacred stone that they came across was highly radioactive. American security forces have sequestered it and placed it at a remote, isolated location.

I love the Saturday matinee feel of this whole series. Each deftly rendered scene moves the story along, even if ever so slightly, flitting back and forth in time and place, all evidence of a deeply laid design. Soon the shadows will recede fully and the statue (still in part obscure) will be visible in all its glory.

Soon, soon, soon.

The publisher’s description of Amazonia: Episode 4 can be read here.

Thorgal 21 – The Sacrifice

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Thorgal 21 – The Sacrifice

Script by Van Hamme

Artwork by Rosinski

Cinebook, 2025

A nuanced existential lesson.

There is no easy way to say this, so I will come clean and plumb for an honest and open confession. This is the first Thorgal adventure I have read. When it comes to tales of espionage and political intrigue, Van Hamme is in a class of his own. And so I was intrigued to learn how he fared when it comes to the sword and sorcery genre.

Here we are among Norsemen, in a world (or rather a cosmos, a virtual pluriverse) of gods and mortals. Odin rules over all, but there are other gods and they have foibles and strange powers. Even so, there is order in this cosmos, constants that you can rely on. We are told, for example, that a portal from one world to another is ‘one way only’; you can go from A to B, but not return from B to A by that same path.

Rosinski has worked with Van Hamme before, and knows him well. His artwork is full of occult wonder and dark mystery, while the story carries not only a sizable emotional jolt but a nuanced existential lesson. Thorgal is close to death and, in order for his life to be saved, Jolan (Thorgal’s son) must sacrifice his own. That is the pact that Manthor presents to Jolan and the boy, loving his father, consents. But is this a blessing or a curse?

What Manthor wants from Jolan, mind, is not to kill him but (at a near future date) to adopt and foster and mentor him. Manthor will shape and fashion Jolan, hone his skills, form his being in certain specific ways. That is what is meant by sacrifice.

It is a curious interpretation but, on reflection, all lives, if meaningful and dedicated to a higher purpose, are sacrifices of some sort or another. You either sacrifice your life or waste it, what other options are there? And what Manthor is offering Jolan, perhaps, is a path to fulfilment.

That’s the lesson that I took away from this cosmic adventure, anyway: by accepting the terms offered, Jolan saved not only his father’s life but his own.

It is fair to say that Van Hamme is a dab hand when it comes to sword and sorcery too.

The publisher’s description of Thorgal 21 – The Sacrifice can be read here.

Huge Detective, Volume 1

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Huge Detective, Volume 1

Script by Adam Rose

Artwork by Magenta King

Titan Comics, 2025

An exhilarating journey with very many sharp, witty touches.

At the centre of this unique graphic novel lies a genuine murder mystery: a woman has been killed, three children are missing in a cave out by a lake, and the sole survivor, whether perpetrator or victim or witness (we do not yet know), is a young man called Manny. He is a bewildered soul and has difficulty speaking about what he has seen.

There is a twist to this tale, mind, which is that all of these events are taking place in a world where there are these massive, Brobdingnagian people (described as ‘huge’) alongside normal-sized human beings. They stand in relation to humans as dinosaurs do in relation to birds, you might say: a large size disparity, Yes certainly, but otherwise very similar.

One of Manny’s difficulties, maybe his root predicament, concerns his identity: he is a human who thinks he is a ‘huge’ (or is he a ‘huge’ who has shrunk? Or a hybrid of some kind?).

As a human detective, Tamaki, and a ‘huge’ detective called Gyant (not, curiously enough, Gnat) team up and, in time-honoured tradition, they are called upon to combat their own prejudices if they are to solve the case. It appears, too, that an unfortunate ‘huge’, known to be missing, is also among the dead…

For me, Huge Detective, Volume 1 was an exhilarating journey with very many sharp, witty touches in both script and artwork, courtesy of Adam Rose and Magenta King respectively. You are gradually made aware of a world in precarious balance, where human beings are weaker but also more numerous. These two races (if such they can be called) live side by side yet distrust, hatred and violence lies not far beneath the surface. Nonetheless there is kinship, helpfulness and sacrifice here as well.

An intriguing mystery.

The publisher’s description of Huge Detective, Volume 1 can be read here.

The Space Between the Trees

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The Space Between the Trees

Script and Artwork by Norm Konyu

Titan Comics, 2025

Nature strikes back.

Some graphic novels charm, others unsettle, whereas a few, a select few, do both. The Space Between the Trees is in this elite category.

Meera and Mark, to all appearances an ordinary couple, are looking for a home, but cannot find one that suits. Somehow, they do not feel like they belong in the modern world. Precious trees have been cut down to make way for soulless houses that all look the same. It seems so alien.

As Meera and Mark drive away, they literally run out of road. Their car plummets into a dark, eerie forest. Wherever they look, there are tall, ancient trees: silent sentinels indifferent to their fate. This world too is alien. Where do Meera and Mark belong?

Try as they might, there is no escape. Indeed, Meera and Mark are trapped not so much in space as in time, something which they (and we) only slowly come to realise.

Circular in structure, and so therefore not unlike a tree, Norm Konyu’s graphic novel is laced with paradox, as many time-travel tales are. Mark’s childhood story about his Great Aunt Mary, related early on, acquires a wholly new meaning by the close, for us and for Meera too.

The Space Between the Trees fascinates and bewitches as a story, and has such strange artwork as well, the precise and angular figures and scenes coupled with a murky watercolour effect. It is disorientating, while at the same time it continually draws you in. The ending does not bring closure but rather opens up the world.

A dark, shadowy, mysterious masterpiece.

The publisher’s description of The Space Between the Trees can be read here.

Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes

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Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes

Directed and Choreographed by Matthew Bourne

Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale

Music by Bernard Herrmann

The Lowry, 25 November 2025

Ashley Shaw as Victoria Page in Matthew Bourne's The Red Shoes — Ashley Shaw as Victoria Page in Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes. Photo by Johan Persson

The Red Shoes: A Sumptuous Serenade for the Senses.

Matthew Bourne has transformed Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s classic film into a visual and emotional spectacle that celebrates theatrical excess in the most glorious way possible. Every scene in this production feels like stepping into a jewel box, or one of Joseph Cornell’s elaborate assemblages: all and everything is lavishly appointed, ornately decorated, meticulously crafted and almost overwhelming in its richness.

The designs by Lez Brotherston are nothing short of breath-taking. From the backstage chaos of a 1940s theatre company to the beaches and cafes of Monte Carlo, each setting brimmed with period detail and sumptuous colour. Bourne’s productions have always been lavish, but he and his team have really outdone themselves this time. As a story, The Red Shoes demands a glamour and grandeur, and they deliver it without any restraint whatsoever. The costumes alone consume your attention, even though much else is vying for it. And that’s true whether it’s the elegance of ’40s fashion, the fantastical creations that populate the ballet-within-a-ballet, or the various popular acts (two Egyptians, a ventriloquist and his dummy a la Dead of Night) that populate a seedy music hall. Every costume tells a story.

As for Bernard Herrmann’s score, it has been adapted and arranged with care, and it provides the perfect foundation for the drama that unfolds. His music swells with romantic intensity one moment and bristles with psychological tension the next, capturing both the glamour and the darkness of the story. At certain moments, I thought of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, another tale of a man manipulating a woman, and one where Herrmann’s music also played a key role. Here (in The Red Shoes) the choreography responded with panache to the music’s shifting moods, Bourne crafting sequences that ranged from elaborate psychodramas to burlesque comedy, all the way to emotional breakdown.

At the molten centre of this emotional maelstrom, of course, there stands Victoria Page; and Ashley Shaw brought to the role a delicate vulnerability yet also an indefatigable spirit. Even as the world closes in around, she will never stop loving and pursuing her art. She will always go on.

You are aware that the drama, for most of the time, cuts deep: there is obsession, compulsion, ambition and, of course, love. Yet there are also moments of contemplation and play; there is slapstick humour; there are here casual gestures and humdrum humanity. These people are wonderfully alive, even as their fate tilts toward tragedy.

The Red Shoes is a show (and it is a proper show, I should emphasise: it will blow your socks off) that embraces lushness as a virtue and, like its heroine, is possessed of an indefatigable exuberance. It is proof, also, that spectacle and substance can dance toe to toe.

Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes is showing at The Lowry until Saturday 29 November. Details of future performances can be found here.

The Holy Innocents

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The Holy Innocents

By Miguel Delibes

Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush

Foreword by Colm Tóibín

Yale University Press, 2025

The stark substance of classical tragedy.

Because Miguel Delibes’s classic novel is such a compelling examination of privilege and poverty, entitlement and oppression, it is easy to overlook its moments of great tenderness, sparse though they are. The love between Azarias (who appears to me as a character out of Beckett, had Beckett written Kes) and his young niece Tiny, an unfortunate girl-child, is at the outer reach of heart-rending. His terrible grief at the death of the Grand Duke is soul-shattering.

The Holy Innocents is set in a world of bosses and peasants, where those in charge wield immense power. If a bright and capable young woman like Nieves, Azarias’s elder niece, wants to take Holy Communion, she must first seek permission from her father’s boss, and it can be refused, dismissed out of hand.

Peasants can be valuable to their masters, that much is true, Paco being a fine hunter who can locate birds which are then shot. And this usefulness gives them a certain bargaining power and a definite status. But woe betide the peasant who gets injured or grows old, for as their usefulness diminishes, so does their worth. Against this brutal system, the family remains a strong force, though there are signs, especially in the character of Quirce, a young man tempted by the city, that it will soon fragment.

While set in a specific place and time, the resolutely traditional province of Extremadura in the 1960s with the modern world steadily encroaching, The Holy Innocents has a fundamental quality, the stark substance of classical tragedy. These people are driven by ambition, lust, love, boredom and revenge, and they cannot help but act as they do. Whether the killing at the end was truly inevitable can be argued about and disputed, but it feels salutary. There are natural limits to how human beings should exercise power over one another, and when those limits are breached, corrective action, often in the form of violence, is called for. You could even make the case that societies like these require such violent, fatal acts. Power must always be tempered by fear.

From the start, right from the get-go, Delibes’s artistry is evident. One character takes centre-stage in the first chapter, where a few others are alluded to, then one of these other characters takes centre-stage in chapter two, and so on, until a whole world, an entire populace, comes into being. At once you are captivated, though somehow always estranged, for there is an elemental quality here that forever retains its mystery.

The publisher’s description of The Holy Innocents can be read here.

Kraken, Volume 1

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Kraken, Volume 1

Script by Shannon Eric Denton

Artwork by David Hartman

Titan Comics, 2025

A monster who remembers that he once was a man.

I looked it up, anyway, and apparently a Kraken is a sea monster, a leviathan, this one dwelling off the coast of Norway specifically. There is also a John Wyndham novel, The Kraken Wakes, but that’s nowt to do with this.

Our Kraken, instead, is an adventurer, a pilot and seafarer, who all believe had been killed but who, some three years later, returns a changed man. (But is he a man?) It is beautifully rendered, the world he comes back to, a marginal, nautical landscape of islands, ports and harbours, where renegade smuggling and sinister illicit trade is rife. David Hartman’s artwork is gorgeously atmospheric and, at times, quite stunning.

Anyway, reinvigorated by his foray in some nether realm, Kraken hooks up once more with Luis, his old shipmate, and allies himself with Goldy and her gang, a motley crew of gun-toting young women, fiercely maverick, who strut around with holsters strapped to their thighs.

There is a great wrong to be righted, for children are being kidnapped, though who knows why and for what diabolical aim. Kraken battles against the Black Baron, an old adversary from way back when, virtually a lifetime ago in fact, as well as against a satanic High Priestess and her night-spawn (she calls them pets). Not forgetting some slithering Nazis (we are in the 1930s here, though far away from Germany).

At root this is a salutary tale about men and monsters; about men who become monsters (those minion Nazis); and about a monster (Kraken is his name) who remembers that he once was a man. He retains, against all the odds, his heart and humanity, and his monstrous powers are placed at the service of virtue.

The characters are finely drawn, Luis in particular being a vital presence, and Shannon Eric Denton’s dark adventure is as riveting as David Hartman’s tenebrous artwork.

The publisher’s description of Kraken, Volume 1 can be read here.

Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring, Volume 1

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Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring, Volume 1

Script and Artwork by Patch Zircher

Titan Comics, 2025

A Puritan warrior in an Age of Empire.

Solomon Kane is an Englishman, an adventurer and pirate (or ‘privateer’ as it is called here: I suppose a kind of mercenary), when we first lay eyes on him. He and his gang of miscreants raid a ship bound for Venice and, once onboard, he kills a man in mortal combat. Before his death, the man (apparently an innocent) makes Kane promise to give a cheap statuette to a learned Jew, a Kabbalist by name of Abramo, in the Venetian ghetto.

Being a man of honour as well as a cold-blooded killer, Kane fulfils his promise. And, once the statuette is shattered, it reveals a map. The map points to an ancient monument in Africa where the fabled Serpent Ring can be found. And an expedition, made up of Kane and Abramo, his daughter Diamanta, and a duo of disgraced knights, set out to find it.

That’s the adventure, which is set in the late sixteenth century, so around about the Renaissance or early modern period. It is an age of colonisation and competing Empires, of exploration and invasion, of slavery and exploitation. In Africa Abramo and his daughter Diamanta stumble across an elephant and a bask of crocodiles, a jarring reminder that Durer drew a rhinoceros even though he never, as far as we know, saw one.

Christianity has the upper hand in Kane’s world, but there are other Gods and religions too. Here a Jesuit priest is a demonic imposter, one among many shapeshifters. And Kane’s nemesis is a priestess who is a worshipper of Set, a deity known to Conan.

It is a timely reminder that though Solomon Kane bestrides this world as a Puritan warrior, a soldier of Christ, he is part of the same universe as Conan (both having sprung from the imagination of Robert E. Howard), though the two men are separated by the odd aeon.

There is, besides the graphic novel, a bunch of extras, including an interview with author Patch Zircher, a comprehensive covers gallery, and a sort of script and panels combo, showing you what the script looks like on the page, when it is realised through the artwork. All good stuff.

The publisher’s description of Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring, Volume 1, a thrilling adventure and wholly self-contained, can be read here.

Opera North: La bohème

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Opera North: La bohème

Music by Giacomo Puccini

The Lowry, 12 November 2025

Love romantic and sensual.

Opera North’s sterling production of La bohème placed Puccini’s magnificent score at its centre, the music showing us love in all its forms: romantic and yearning, physical and passionate.

Rodolfo (Anthony Ciaramitaro) and Mimi (Olivia Boen) have a love that unfolds in soaring, achingly tender phrases, while the sublime aria ‘Che gelida manina’ (Your tiny hand is frozen) seems to suspend time with its hushed melody. Their love duet ‘O soave fanciulla’ (O lovely girl in the moonlight), the set featuring a moon worthy of Galileo Galilei, was a highlight. Here the orchestra, courtesy of Puccini, transported the lovers to an enchanted space: we heard held notes, myriad delicate woodwind, the construction of something precious and fragile.

By contrast, Marcello (Yuriy Yurchuk) and Musetta (Elin Pritchard) have a love that is passionate and sensual, even at times violent. The music seems to erupt when Musetta first storms onto the stage: she is a woman who wants to be desired, who seeks out male attention. Elin Pritchard as Musetta embodies a strutting sexuality, the brash orchestration and rhythmic swagger serving as a perfect accompaniment. What you notice is that Puccini’s score refuses in any way to moralise: both relationships are rendered with unquestioned rigour. Indeed, Musetta (for all her faults) has a vitality that Mimi lacks.

The final act is heartrending, and the abrupt clatter of drums at the close retains its power to shock. Death is a door that cannot be opened.

Details of future Opera North performances of La bohème can be found here.

The Hallé – Elder conducts Dvořák

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The Hallé – Elder conducts Dvořák

The Bridgewater Hall, 9 November 2025

An Evening of Contrasts: Nordic Atmosphere Meets Classical Refinement.

Right from the very start we were swept away, amidst the landscape of Sibelius’s Scènes historiques, Suite No. 2, the Hallé evoking the brooding Nordic atmosphere with impressive control. They navigated the suite’s episodic structure deftly, drawing out the melancholic beauty of ‘The Love Song’ while unleashing dramatic intensity in ‘At the Drawbridge’; the brass section in particular did itself proud.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 proved the evening’s centrepiece and revelation. Dame Imogen Cooper approached this final concerto with remarkable maturity, understanding that Mozart’s deceptive simplicity demands absolute clarity and emotional honesty. Her touch was luminous yet never precious; the first movement’s opening theme emerged with conversational elegance, while the development sections revealed an architect’s sense of structure. The Larghetto was genuinely moving, spun out with an admirably patient restraint that allowed Mozart’s long-breathed phrases to unfold organically. Here was a pianist that trusted silence as much as sound. In the finale, Dame Imogen’s touch sparkled without affectation, her virtuosity serving the music’s joyful spirit. The cadenzas were thoughtfully constructed, stylistically appropriate yet somehow human. Her symbiotic relationship with the orchestra impressed most of all; this was genuine chamber music-making at the keyboard.

After the interval, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 5 took to the stage, exuding abundant Bohemian charm and revealing the composer at a crucial transitional moment. By this stage, Dvořák was confident of his voice yet still confronting Wagner and Brahms. Sir Mark Elder, conducting, wisely emphasized Dvořák’s greatest gift: his seemingly inexhaustible melodic invention. The opening movement’s principal theme, introduced by the clarinets, possessed that distinctive Dvořák quality of being both folk-like and sophisticated, and the Hallé shaped its repetitions with loving care, each iteration revealing freshly painted colours. The Andante con moto showcased the strings’ expressive warmth, particularly in the movement’s songful second theme, which the violins rendered with vocal eloquence. Here, Dvořák’s melodies took flight naturally, avoiding the four-square phrasing that can at times mar lesser works. Somehow, they flow and curve like actual folk songs remembered and transformed. The scherzo’s furious rhythms had infectious energy, while the finale built its momentum through a profusion of melodic ideas, the conductor retaining the architectural sweep even amid such thematic abundance.

This was a wonderful concert in both conception and execution, thoughtfully moving from Sibelius’s granite-hewn landscapes onto Mozart’s crystalline perfection and ending with Dvořák’s melodic profusion.

Details of future Hallé concerts can be found here.

Breaking the Code

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Breaking the Code

By Hugh Whitemore

HOME, 29 October 2025

Mystery remains.

The play gives a fair summary of Alan Turing’s life, at least in so far as can be gleaned from Andrew Philip Hodges’s fine biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma. His close boyhood friendship with Christopher Morcom, a fellow pupil at Sherborne School, whose untimely death marked and haunted him for life, is dwelt upon in some depth. In Mark Edel-Hunt’s persuasive portrayal of Turing we are shown a man of intellectual brilliance, armed with a ferocious curiosity, yet burdened with what might be called a liberal naivety. There is a constant fearless integrity, magnificent at Bletchley Park where it was called upon to meet a challenge beyond the ken of others, but fatal in post-war Manchester, where it proved his undoing. Hell is a city indeed.

In Hugh Whitemore’s telling, Alan Turing is brought vividly alive in blaring colours. He is a vulnerable Victor Frankenstein, kind of: a mournful man who sets out to bring his lost love (Christopher) to life, in the form of an electronic brain. In one scene, Turing regrets not having had children, but in a sense his children (whether one thinks of ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Stockfish or AlphaZero: one could go on…) are everywhere, for good or ill. We live in Turing’s world, amidst artifacts inspired by the boy he loved and mourned all his life.

Unfortunately Neil Bartlett’s epilogue seemed out of place. As an add-on scene it was rather jarring, since it was not about Alan Turing’s life at all, but was a kind of commemoration of him as gay martyr and LGTBQ (or should that be LGTBQ+?) icon. It was a cumbersome attempt to appropriate him to a fashionable political agenda and, as such, out of kilter with what had gone before. If you were presented with a draft of of the play as performed, this is a scene you would cut.

But, then again, maybe Turing himself would be more forgiving. In a famous paper he wrote that ‘it is probably wise to include a random element in a learning machine’ and, who knows, perhaps he’d say the same might apply to plays too?

Further details about Breaking the Code can be found here.

Details about future theatre at HOME can be found here.

The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver

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The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver, Part 1

By Jean Van Hamme, Rene Sterne and Chantal De Spiegeleer

Cinebook, 2012

The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver, Part 2

By Jean Van Hamme and Antoine Aubin

Cinebook, 2012

A stark battle between Good and Evil.

Nowadays we are all aware of Nazis being associated with weird occult schemes, thanks in part to books like Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s The Morning of the Magicians and films like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, this Blake and Mortimer adventure fits right into the genre.

It begins some years after the Second World War, with a cataclysmic earthquake in Greece. As a result, an ancient cave is suddenly made accessible and a treasure trove is discovered within it by an inquisitive goatherd. The most precious item is a silver coin, a denarius, that archaeologists believe may have belonged to Judas Iscariot. But this raises a further question: where are the other silver coins? Does the cave offer any clues as to their whereabouts?

For Professor Mortimer, an eclectic polymath, it is the find of a lifetime. A world famous expert, he is called over to Greece to appraise the coin and advise on next steps. As for Captain Blake, he is wanted in the USA because our American brethren are in a spot of bother. It seems that Olrik has just been sprung from a high security prison.

There is a swift convergence of narrative when we discover that Olrik was freed by an ex-Nazi who desperately wants to get possession of all 30 pieces of silver. He believes that acquiring these ancient Roman coins will make him ‘Master of Evil’, whatever that means. This madcap ambition makes even Olrik roil his eyes somewhat, to his great credit. The venerable villain clocks that his benefactor is certifiably insane, but (hey!) he is being paid well so best to go along for the ride. There is also a chance of getting his own back on that damned Mortimer (what you have got to love about Olrik is that he is a brilliant begrudger), but not just yet. While his Nazi boss has no great love of Mortimer, he wants to keep him alive for a bit longer, until he leads them to the hoard of silver. And Olrik, visibly frustrated, reluctantly agrees to play nice for now.

At one fortuitous moment Blake meets up with his erstwhile ally. They compare notes on how best to proceed and plan to journey to a Greek isle. That there are mishaps, shenanigans and intrigues along the way should come as no surprise. But the crucial act toward the close, an act of redemption from an unlikely quarter that spells salvation for Blake and Mortimer, is wholly unexpected. Yet also wholly apt. God moves in mysterious ways.

The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver, in its own way a stark battle between Good and Evil, is one of the very best Blake and Mortimer adventures.

The publisher’s description of The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver, Part 1 can be read here.

The publisher’s description of The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver, Part 2 can be read here.

ENO: Albert Herring

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ENO: Albert Herring

By Benjamin Britten

The Lowry, 21 October 2025

Caspar Singh, ENO’s Albert Herring 2025 © Genevieve Girling

Life in an English Village.

There is a lightness of touch to this great post-war opera, present in Benjamin Britten’s score and the story itself, but that is deceptive. For within the velvet glove of fun and frolics, lined with a smooth surface of wry understatement, there rests an iron fist imposing brute convention. It is, in its way, typically English.

As we visit leafy Loxford, the Great and the Good have gathered to decide who should be this year’s May Queen. After much kerfuffle, they cannot in good conscience recommend any of the proposed candidates, village gossip suggesting that all have moral failings of one kind or another. None are suitable.

And so they hit on the idea of having a May King instead, since Albert Herring (Caspar Singh), hard-working and upstanding, an assistant in his mum’s grocery shop, is a doughty exemplar of unblemished virtue (and is so unlike his friend Sid, who is a coarse Jack the Lad). His mum is reluctant to put her son forward at first, but is soon persuaded when she learns that a cash prize is involved. (In the event, it turns out that the actual cash received is less than she was promised, but that is par for the course.) So she brings her son Albert into line, bullying him into agreeing, and preparations are duly made.

Yet all soon goes awry. Dionysus (or his English equivalent, maybe the great god Pan) strikes again.

We hear eulogies and laments when Albert Herring goes missing and is presumed dead, then suspicion and interrogation when he turns up alive and well. Our hero realises he has been bound in a social straitjacket all his life and desperately needs to escape.

What is marvellous about Albert Herring is that it never entirely sheds the veneer of English whimsy (a vicar, a policeman, and a certain Lady Billows all make their voices heard, and loudly) even as the iron fist, becoming gradually a little more exposed, asserts social order. You are left in no doubt that there is a price to pay if you don’t play by the rules.

In actual fact, mind, the two act in concert: whimsy and power are embodied in polite smiles, respectable dress and constrained decorum.

This stupendous production marks the debut of English National Opera (ENO) on the North West stage. You could hardly conceive of a more auspicious beginning.

Details of future ENO performances of Albert Herring can be found here.

Conan the Barbarian: Bound In Black Stone Deluxe Edition

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Conan the Barbarian: Bound In Black Stone Deluxe Edition

Script by Jim Zub

Artwork by Robert De La Torre

Titan Comics, 2025

Primitive privilege.

What is most thrilling about this sumptuous volume, a volume that collects together issues 1 to 4 of the newly revamped Conan the Barbarian, is the world it depicts. We are thrown into a wild world that is almost prehistoric (sabre-tooth tigers roam the jungles), yet where there are dreadful empires and sinister priests who worship strange gods. Everywhere there is danger and the potential for violence, yet also comradeship and sacred spaces. Cities are fraught with mystery, forests and mountains lead on to unknown lands. Here be dragons writ large.

There is mystery surrounding Conan too; and the people of the Hyborian Age as well, come to that. Conan is a wanderer in this immense world, and he thrives as we never could: he is both primitive and privileged.

When the story opens, he is at an outpost as Brissa, a Pict queen, rides in to warn the assembled mercenaries that ‘an army of the lost’ is fast approaching. Battle is joined, many of their comrades fall, and eventually Conan and Brissa are forced to beat a retreat. Their best bet is to trail this army of the undead. And so they stalk them, biding their time. Curiously, the army collects dead bodies as booty, rather than treasure and, later, the dead are reanimated like zombies.

As for the black stone of the title, it rears up like a spire in the icy, craggy landscape of Cimmeria. Conan and Brissa are confronted with it and enter a dwelling with caverns and halls. In one large hall, a ghoulish ritual in being held. Cloaked figures bow before an outlandish priest, while men are being stripped of their souls. Meanwhile, in an outer hall, there lies a prison where Conan’s kinsmen are captive and caged. He is determined to set them free.

Yes, it is a world of danger, mystery and horror. Yet it calls forth a hero of honour and courage. And Conan is equal to the task.

Besides Jim Zub’s fiery story, vividly and vitally brought to life by Robert De La Torre’s artwork, there is a bevy of additional material. Two articles on the background to Robert E. Howard’s original Weird Tales stories; a comprehensive covers gallery; a cache of character sketches by Robert De La Torre; an interview with Jim Zub; and finally, the coup de grâce, a couple of Jim Zub’s plot outlines, showing his text, and its realisation within the comic in the shape of Robert De La Torre’s artwork.

The publisher’s description of Conan the Barbarian: Bound In Black Stone Deluxe Edition can be read here.

The Hallé – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

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The Hallé – The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The Bridgewater Hall, 12 October 2025

By George Grantham Bain Collection - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ggbain.32392.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1391428 — Igor Stravinsky. Photo from the George Grantham Bain Collection (Public Domain)

An Evening of French Brilliance and Russian Fire.

Last night’s Hallé concert proved a masterstroke of curation, tracing a generous undulating arc from German late-Romanticism onto French impressionism, arriving eventually at Stravinsky’s revolutionary primitivism. What united all these works was their origin in dance and a certain consequent orchestral colour.

We opened with Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the orchestra playing with gleeful precision , the bassoon’s mischievous theme emerging before cascading into orchestral chaos: accident by design. Maxime Pascal, conducting with aplomb, wisely resisted over-indulgence, keeping the tempi crisp and the textures transparent. Even as the waters rose…

Next up was the Ibert Concerto, which showcased not only a superb soloist in Amy Yule, her tone combining silvery clarity with sudden warmth, but also the composer’s wit and delicate touch. Ibert’s score revealed genuine depth here, the slow movement’s melancholy lyricism beautifully sustained against harp and strings.

As for Ravel’s many waltzes, there was a distinct characterisation allotted to each one. Their various moods were ably captured by the Hallé, like so many fragmentary melodic jewels glinting in a leather purse. And Ravel would go on to say much more about the waltz in later works, as I learned earlier this year.

We ended with Petrushka; and what an ending it turned out to be. This time Maxime Pascal showed thrilling intensity, bringing to the fore all of Stravinsky’s rhythmic drive and bold colour contrasts (this was the 1947 version of the work, by the way). Tableaux blazed with life and the puppet’s traumatic predicament was genuinely moving.

This was an exhilarating concert that will live long in the memory.

Details of future Hallé concerts can be found here.

Breathtaker Collection

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Breathtaker Collection

Script by Mark Wheatley

Artwork by Marc Hempel

Titan Comics, 2025

You must change your life.

Chase Darrow is a femme fatale for real. When men have sex with her, they age, wither and die. She is a reluctant vamp, mind. Each fallen man is mourned.

As the story opens, Chase is running from a salubrious mansion where billionaire Paul Raymond, her latest lover, has died. Once the police arrive, the death is classed as suspicious and an alert is put out for her. At a roadside café she hooks up with Lou Dupka, the father of two small children, and they take off in a truck. It is easy to fall in love with Chase. Men will sacrifice everything – children, wife, family – for her.

There is a superhero called ‘The Man’ who takes an interest in the case, but Chase proves to be kryptonite even for him. One night with her and his hair begins to recede…

It turns out that Chase and The Man have something else in common. Both were part of a scientific project aiming to develop a race of superhumans, to which end their DNA was altered. This meant that The Man became capable of immense feats of strength and Chase became immensely sexually attractive but also an inadvertent killer.

On a deep level, Breathtaker is a story about personal transformation and renewal. In time Chase begins to loath herself and to regret the carnage she leaves in her wake. Entering a dark place, she even considers suicide. Change happens, but only when she learns that she can nurture and give. Renewal and replenishment follows.

Breathtaker is an intriguing, thought-provoking yarn that must rank as one of Mark Wheatley’s best. Marc Hempel’s vital and vivid artwork brings the story to life.

The publisher’s description of Breathtaker Collection can be read here.

Black Sabbath – The Ballet

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Black Sabbath – The Ballet

Choreography by Carlos Acosta

Birmingham Royal Ballet

The Lowry, 8 October 2025

Black Sabbath - The Ballet. Photo Credit : David Polston — Black Sabbath – The Ballet. Photo Credit : David Polston

A feast for ballet purists and metalheads alike.

This new work by Carlos Acosta is a fevered celebration of the famous Birmingham band and its effervescent frontman, the late Ozzy Osbourne.

By all that is good and sacred and holy, classical ballet and heavy metal music really shouldn’t cohere. But somehow, in Black Sabbath: The Ballet, they do. You are looking on something as strong as tensile steel.

There are three acts to Acosta’s vital work: ‘Heavy Metal Ballet’, ‘The Band’ and ‘Everybody is a Fan’. Black Sabbath’s music can be heard throughout, in bountiful abundance, but each act has an original score inspired by their music as well. Marko Nyberg does the honours for act one, with Sun Keting and Christopher Austin filling in on acts two and three respectively.

The voices of Ozzy Osbourne and other members of Black Sabbath can be heard in acts one and two, along with that of Ozzy’s wife, Sharon Osbourne. I was intrigued to learn that it was Ozzy’s love of Holst’s The Planets, and in particular the Mars section (‘Mars, the Bringer of War’) that led to the birth of Heavy Metal as a genre.

Despite the band’s name, I would say that their songs describe not a Satanic phantasm but the world as it is, seen from the vantage of a marginalised outsider. They are raucous and rowdy, with a good heart and a down to earth outlook.

Acosta’s exquisite choreography gave us many moments of classical ballet along with a frenetic, gorgeous, clockwork dance at the start of act 2 and an exultant celebration of Black Sabbath the band for much of act 3.

It is a difficult balance to achieve, but Birmingham Royal Ballet have succeeded. They have, with Black Sabbath: The Ballet, created a show that will be relished by both ballet purists and metalheads alike.

Black Sabbath – The Ballet is showing at The Lowry until 11 October, details of future performances can be found here.

The Loose End, Volume 1

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The Loose End, Volume 1

By Dave Dwonch

Artwork by Travis Hymel

Titan Comics, 2025

Deft storytelling and stylish, sophisticated artwork.

There is a terrific use of time-shift and flashback in this entertaining foray into neo noir, the story opening with a speeding van careening away from a drug deal that has gone very seriously wrong, before burrowing back two days and then three. Right from the off, you are pulled back in time, only then to be propelled forward once more. As a reader, you are kept constantly on edge; and that is the situation too with Steven, our protagonist.

Steven Hollis (to give him his full name) happens to be an out-of-work screenwriter with a gambling problem. One sorry night he loses heavily, getting into debt big-time. This puts him at the mercy of Lucca Burlusconi, the big-time gangster who owns the casino where he’d bombed. Since Steven cannot pay the money he owes, he is presented with a choice: take a severe beating, death being a likely outcome, or carry out a killing, the target being a slimeball movie producer. Wisely, Steven chooses the second option.

So begins a trip to Mexico with the movie producer and some actor pals, Steven aiming to discreetly slip him a venomous poison. But chaos ensues when the aforementioned wild drug deal turns sour, leading to fiery gunfights and right royal shenanigans. There is also, mind, a really quite sweet and tender gay love story, Tim and Diedrich (two of Steven’s actor pals) finally coming clean and sharing their feelings (always simmering just below surface) for each other.

The Loose End, Volume 1 is, quite simply, supremely crafted neo-noir, Dave Dwonch’s deft storytelling combining with Travis Hymel’s stylish and sophisticated artwork to create a compelling tour de force.

The publisher’s description of The Loose End, Volume 1 can be read here.

System Preference

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System Preference

Script and Artwork by Ugo Bienvenu

Titan Comics, 2025

Magnificent and innovative graphic science-fiction.

Ugo Bienvenu’s Ray Bradbury-inspired yarn is set in a future world (and it may be the near future) where AI is endemic, surveillance is a fact of life and there is simply too much stuff. Everything, all cultural artifacts, have long ago been digitized (contrary to the Florence Declaration) and are kept in a massive, memory structure or installation. The problem is that space is at a premium and certain items (films not often watched, literature seldom read) are periodically marked for destruction.

Mathon’s job is to delete files to free up space. But he simply cannot part with some of them (a film by Kubrick, Auden’s poems) and so preserves them elsewhere. This, once discovered, marks him out as a dangerous revolutionary. Spooked and fearful, he goes on the run with his wife and child and a robonanny called Mikki.

Mid-story there is a sizable shock, which i won’t dwell upon at all (it would be too much of a spoiler), but suffice to say in the latter part we see Isi (short for Isabel?) an orphaned child, feral and wondrous, raided by a maverick robot. There is a titanic use of Auden’s great Funeral Blues (one of Mathon’s favourite poems) toward the close. As ever, art marks the passage of life. This is magnificent and innovative graphic science-fiction.

The publisher’s description of System Preference can be read here.

Rambert x (LA)HORDE

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Rambert x (LA)HORDE

The Lowry, 18 September 2025

How can human beings be so supple?

This was an evening of passion and protest, grace and athleticism. In short, hypermodern dance.

Three works were performed on the premiere stage of the Lowry’s Lyric Theatre – all different, yet of a piece. For the first, Hop(e)storm, a new work commissioned exclusively for Rambert, there were eight dancers onstage, followed thereafter by a further four. What you got was a whirlwind of movement, displaying elements of ballet, contemporary dance and Lindy Hop. While no clear narrative could be discerned, the pyrotechnics on stage were mesmerising.

Next we had a reprise of one of (LA)HORDE’S celebrated works, Weather is Sweet, an altogether more intimate experience. Here there were no more than six dancers on stage at any one time, and sometimes only two. The dance was sensual and sometimes raw, simulating sex though with huge dollops of humour. At times what you saw was a kind of cartoonish depiction of human sexual behaviour, a way of highlighting how absurd our desires can sometimes be.

Following the interval, we got another classic (LA)HORDE work with Room with a View, where again twelve dancers took to the stage. It had an epic feel, this one, and dealt with themes of self-expression, survival and rebellion. Pure dance channelled rage and defiance.

It was a marvellous show: intriguing, challenging, occasionally breathtaking, at times amusing, always enjoyable. The sheer virtuosity of the dancers saw to that. Speaking as someone who can barely bend over some mornings, how can human beings be so supple? Incidentally, though there was no set to speak of and the dancers were dressed in casual clothes, your attention was captive throughout. The music had a percussive, dissonant, grimy flavour. I should add, though, that in general men danced with women and women danced with men, which shows perhaps that (LA)HORDE are not quite as radical as they make out.

Rambert x (LA)Horde is showing at The Lowry until 18 September, details of future performances can be found here.

Caesar’s Spy

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Caesar’s Spy

Script by Jean-Pierre Pecau

Artwork by Max Von Fafner

Titan Comics, 2025

A callous landscape of cruel folly and luxurious temptation.

The brutal, beautiful world of Ancient Rome is brought vividly to life in this epic adventure set half a century before the birth of Christ. It has a complex and conflicted protagonist in Coax, a Gallic orphan who grows up to become a pirate, a slave, a gladiator and (eventually) the bodyguard, spy and special agent of one Julius Caesar.

It should be explained that here Julius Caesar is not a noble, elder statesman but rather a young senator and general, bent on power and victory over his enemies, whether they be political or military. If Coax will serve him well, Julius Caesar will allow him to wreak vengeance on those who had killed his daughter. At this proposal, Coax’s warrior soul leaps: it is a deal he signs up for in blood, without fear of consequence.

Against the barbarians (the Germanic peoples and the Gauls, Coax’s own kin), Julius Caesar battles, with Coax as his right-hand man. Then he turns his ire on Rome itself. Thus civil war ensues and the Republic is brought low, only to rise in triumph at the close.

Political intrigue and wanton betrayal feature quite prominently in this savage tale, alongside bloody battle scenes, pagan rituals and tribal magic. Nor are you spared a moment’s respite, for you are caught up in a callous landscape of cruel folly and luxurious temptation. Whether Rome was actually like this, I am unsure; but as long as you read, you are convinced.

Later, as I put the book aside, saying adieu to these flawed pagans frolicking amid their fabulous lands, it occurred to me that only one word is honoured and kept, that just one bond endures unbroken. And it is the bond between Julius Caesar and his spy and one-time slave Coax.

The publisher’s description of Caesar’s Spy can be read here.

Gun Honey, Volume 3: Collision Course

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Gun Honey, Volume 3: Collision Course

By Charles Ardai

Artwork by Ang Hor Kheng

Titan Comics, 2025

Bloody carnage, high-tech, venal ambition.

There is explosive action right from the get-go in this adventure that, according to my understanding, follows on from where Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series left off. See my review of that volume here

It seems that Brook is a client of Yamato’s (maybe Gorman was too), and those that want Joanna and Barrow dead now turn their ire on him.

For her next job, we learn that Joanna Tan may be asked to deposit a gun in the Kremlin, in the office of a certain Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. That will really be something, if it happens.

The publisher’s description of Gun Honey, Volume 3: Collision Course can be read here.

Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series

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Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series

By Charles Ardai

Artwork by Ace Continuado

Titan Comics, 2024

A living, loving Venus Fly Trap.

In the clandestine ‘Gun Honey’ universe as envisioned by creator Charles Ardai, a world of international organised crime and espionage, each participant has a niche function, a valuable role to play. What Joanna Tan herself (‘Gun Honey’) brings to the party is an ability to place a gun (indeed any weapon, but it is usually a gun) at a specific location, ready for use. It is a specialist service, but there is a need for it. (The paradigmatic instance of this in popular culture being, I’d suppose, the restaurant scene in The Godfather, though Joanna can and does operate in much more challenging environments.)

Here we are introduced to another young woman operating in this world, Dahlia Racers, ‘heat seeker’ extraordinaire. The set-up is that people come to her when their lives are in danger and they need to disappear sharpish. She makes it happen by allowing them to lie low, while she takes their place (Dahlia is a master of disguise), becoming a lethal magnet, drawing the evil-doers to herself and eliminating them one by one. You could call her a living, loving Venus Fly Trap. Hunters are her prey. Anyway, that is what a ‘heat seeker’ does, they draw the heat to themselves and away from their clients.

Turns out that it is Joanna Tan, with Brook Barrow in tow, who turns up on Dahlia’s doorstep in this first volume, desperately needing her services. Duly engaged, Dahlia and her sidekick Cesar assume the identities of Joanna and Brook and set a series of traps…

It is such an ingeniously contrived storyline, this one, deception following deception right up until the end. Somehow it all holds together, forming a coherent whole.

Ace Continuado’s artwork is frenetic and fast moving, and serves the story splendidly.

And I was very much enamoured of the villainous Sarah Claride, a mean nasty gal who definitely deserves a reprise. She is convincing proof that sociopathic girls, especially when wearing spectacles, can be sexy.

The publisher’s description of Heat Seeker: A Gun Honey Series can be read here.

Blake and Mortimer: The Complete Collection, Volume 1

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Blake and Mortimer: The Complete Collection, Volume 1

By Edgar P. Jacobs

Cinebook, 2025

A splendidly entertaining adventure.

The first of a projected series of handsome hardbacks, Blake and Mortimer: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 contains The Secret of the Swordfish, the epic adventure that introduced our dashing and doughty duo.

It is set in a world where the Imperials, or the Yellow Empire, a sovereign entity not unlike Communist China (the red star as symbol is much in evidence), has bombed the capital cities of other nations to smithereens. Rome, Paris and London all lie in ruins, though we are not told about Berlin or Vienna.

Although the Imperials are in the ascendancy, here and there pockets of resistance remain, notably among the forces of what once was (or still is?) the British Empire. Among these stalwarts are Blake and Mortimer, and in fact Mortimer is developing an aeroplane with a nuclear warhead, the so-called Swordfish. If his researches bear fruit and the Swordfish takes flight, the day may yet be saved.

Most of the action takes places in India (which includes what is now Pakistan, the story presenting a sort of alternate history of the late 1940s) and it is curious that the USSR and the USA are almost wholly absent. All hopes rest with Britain and with Blake and Mortimer’s efforts to escape from their pursuers, including incidentally Colonel Olrik. There are some terrific action scenes: Mortimer escaping from a prison cell, a dogfight where Blake bails out in a parachute, a trek across mountainous terrain. And there are landscapes you yearn to inhabit.

While Edgar P. Jacobs’s Anglophilia is welcome and very good to see (though perhaps undeserved), his Sinophobia (if I can put it like that) seems a little dated. All the talk of the Yellow Empire makes you think of Sax Rohmer and Fu Manchu; and in certain panels the Chinese have Simian faces.

At one point we are told that the Yellow Empire have concentration camps, but Germany is not mentioned in this context. And you feel also as though Jacobs is reluctant to depict Europeans (Germans, say) as evildoers.

At the end, the Free World is resurgent but London lies in ruins and will need to be rebuilt, as at the end of World War Two (and nor is Germany mentioned here, curiously enough).

If I had to sum up The Secret of the Swordfish in a sentence, I’d say it’s a splendidly entertaining adventure realised through spectacular artwork, yet underpinned by a dodgy world view.

The publisher’s description of Blake and Mortimer: The Complete Collection, Volume 1 can be read here.

Death Sentence: The Complete Collection

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Death Sentence: The Complete Collection

Script by Monty Nero

Artwork by Mike Dowling, Martin Simmonds, and Monty Nero

Titan Comics, 2025

Incendiary stuff.

We are thrown into a world very much like our own, but with a few subtle twists. The main one being that those who become infected with a sexually transmitted virus called G+ are doomed to die within 6 months (so it is a ‘death sentence’ and akin to HIV at its most virulent) but, during that time, certain specific abilities are gigantically enhanced. They acquire superpowers.

What remains the same, mind, for those so cursed, is human frailty and fallen virtue and plain unhappiness and a blank confusion as to what life is all about.

The first six chapters here, originally published in one volume, chart the rise and fall of Monty, a stand-up comedian who uses his superpowers to feed his own feral desire. A Sadean hero, he fucks the late Queen (literally) and fucks up the country (both literally and metaphorically), provoking a war with the USA as an amusing bagatelle.

Thankfully Weasel, a punk rocker, and Verity, an arty airhead, both also infected with G+, take on Monty and manage to defeat him. But Britain has become forever changed. Now it is a sort of dystopian wasteland, the capital damaged most of all, almost beyond repair.

In chapters 7-12, originally published as Death Sentence: London, we see the capital city under martial law and a blonde-haired mayor, one Tony Bronson, trying to exert some degree of control. A nice idea, but it doesn’t quite wash unfortunately. This is a world where control continually confronts chaos, and there can only be one winner. For when people become infected with G+ they have at once little left to lose, along with the power, for a short time only, to get whatever they want. It is a heady mix.

Anyway, the Americans look on, see that London is a basket case and, naturally enough, they want to prevent something similar happening to them. And so they send Jeb, an FBI agent, to ‘The Island’, the UK’s top-secret G+ research facility (in fact, it is based in The Falklands), to steal their erstwhile ally’s know-how.

Jeb noses around, looking for all he can find, and this leads the story into some very dark places indeed, as is later set out in Death Sentence: Liberty, chapters 13-18, which sees as well a further fracturing of London Town and the emergence of a superhero group, Young Praetorians (without the definite article), along with much else.

I was very much taken with Death Sentence: The Complete Collection and found it rather overwhelming at times. Mostly written before Covid, much of it can be read as an epic foretelling of what in part came to pass, especially as regards the measures taken by the state to retain order and control. There is an abundance of dramatic incident and fertile thought in Monty Nero’s script and the artwork, by Mike Dowling, Martin Simmonds and Monty Nero himself, not only serves the narrative well, it is thrilling and inventive in and of itself. Incendiary stuff.

The publisher’s description of Death Sentence: The Complete Collection can be read here.

Alpha 3: The List

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Alpha 3: The List

By Jigounov and Renard

Cinebook, 2010

Classy graphic storytelling.

It is a deftly told espionage tale, this one, and, despite being an episode in a series, wholly self-contained. You can certainly enjoy it on it’s own terms.

A Stasi officer, one Colonel Wagemuller, leaves East Germany following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. His aim is to make a life for himself and his family in the West, but the threat of recognition and discovery is always there. Typically, the family will find a nice place and make plans to settle down, but then events will mean they have to move on. All is uncertain.

One asset Colonel Wagemuller has in his possession is a list detailing Western businessmen who have had dealings with East Germany over the years. The list is full of politically sensitive, possibly incriminating information. He decides to offer it to the USA in return for sanctuary and a good life for his family.

This is where Alpha comes in, having been assigned to escort Colonel Wagemuller and family from Amsterdam to the USA. But Mossad and the French want to get their hands on the list as well, so it is by no means plain sailing. Indeed friction, a decidedly bumpy ride, is to be expected.

All told, this is a clear, coherent story with plenty of supine twists and rogue surprises, capped off with a highly satisfying ending. There is even a hint of psychological complexity at certain moments, though this cannot be fully conveyed in a comic book.

The publisher’s description of Alpha 3: The List can be read here.

Buck Danny Classics 8: The Eagle’s Nest

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Buck Danny Classics 8: The Eagle’s Nest

Script by Frédéric Zumbiehl and Frédéric Marniquet

Artwork by André Le Bras

Cinebook, 2024

An atmospheric story, set at a time when the outcome of the Cold War was uncertain.

This graphic adventure begins where Sea Dart, the previous volume, leaves off; and it is at once clear that Buck Danny and Beate, the beautiful Mossad agent, have discovered Sonny’s fallen plane. Tyre marks lead away from the crash site and no casualties can be seen, which is good news at least. Their conclusion being that it seems likely, or is at least possible, that Sonny has survived for now.

Mind you, it is no easy task to track the tyre marks into the Argentine interior, but this is what Buck Danny and Beate attempt to do, and quite successfully as it turns out. Under the guise of being a newly-wedded couple on a honeymooning trip, they make their enquiries. And eventually they infiltrate the German base, headed by a certain Martin Bormann…

The action on the ground (we witness violent tussles, pitched gunfights and tense hand-to-hand combat) is exciting and wonderfully rendered by André Le Bras’ artwork, as is the Argentine landscape, and there are dogfights aplenty in the skies above. But the clandestine intrigue is engrossing too and has a realpolitik, even a cynical undercurrent.

Two incidents stayed with me.

The first came at a point in the story where Buck Danny was reluctant to use excessive force, nay violence, against a couple of captured Germans in order to elicit information about Sonny’s whereabouts. Why not, doesn’t he want to find his captured comrade? Well, Yes, but torture would simply be wrong, he tells his erstwhile bride. Whereas Beate, a Mossad agent well versed in Kapap, has far fewer scruples, especially since many of her relatives had perished in the Holocaust.

The second took the form of a disclosure. We learnt why the CIA had been spying on Bormann’s crew in Argentina and (surprise, surprise!) it was not because the Nazis had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, and needed to be brought to justice for what they had done. No, rather it was because Bormann’s team of scientists were developing an anti-gravity technology and the Americans wanted it. That being their main focus, it is little wonder that Bormann manages to escape to Paraguay.

For Beate, this was a bitter lesson to learn, especially since she had been faced with Buck Danny’s smug moral superiority not too long ago. Her compatriots would not make the same mistake twice, as the abduction of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 would show. There they acted alone.

I enjoyed this graphic adventure, by which I mean Sea Dart and The Eagle’s Nest taken together, immensely. Frédéric Zumbiehl and Frédéric Marniquet’s intelligent script tells an atmospheric story, set at a time (in the early 1950s) when the outcome of the Cold War was uncertain and the fallout from World War Two required careful handling. Besides being a vivid story, it’s a thought-provoking meditation on American power and hypocrisy.

The publisher’s description of Buck Danny Classics 8: The Eagle’s Nest can be read here.

Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet

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Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet

Written by Pete Townshend

Choreography by Paul Roberts

Presented by Sadler’s Wells, Extended Play and Universal Music UK

The Lowry, 15 July 2025

Quadrophenia, a Mod Ballet. Photo by Johan Persson

A world shaped by war, violence and loss.

Right from the get-go, Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet explodes on to the stage. It starts fast, you could even call it amphetamine-charged, and the action never lets up from then on. This is an intense, visceral ballet that pulses with 1960s mod energy. Throughout, the choreography captures mod culture’s sharp, ever so slightly neurotic precision: dancers moving like extensions of their scooters and suits, embodying a studied coolness yet as well a desperate need to belong.

There are two stand-out moments in the ballet and both elicited applause from the audience: ‘My Generation’, where Jimmy (Paris Fitzpatrick) dances alone, and ‘Can’t Explain’, set in a basement club where the whole ensemble are involved. It was surely no coincidence that John Entwistle’s bass guitar could be heard on the two tracks: what an astonishing musician he was. Paul Roberts’s choreography was electrifying here too and it was no slouch elsewhere either. There’s some terrific dancing/fighting scenes on Brighton Beach, where Jimmy’s twin loyalty to his friend, a Rocker, and his tribe, the Mods, is sorely tested. Jimmy’s fractured allegiances are rendered through intense sequences where his Mod comrades raise him up and bring him down.

What I found most interesting, mind, was the way the ballet addressed the post-World War Two trauma of Jimmy’s parents’ generation (Townshend touched on this in Tommy as well). Like his son, Jimmy’s father fought on a beach, where he saw many of his comrades die. These buried memories, unexpressed, seep into his son’s life.

Quadrophenia has one great strength above all: it understands that this generation’s anger isn’t just teenage angst. Rather, it’s a response to a world shaped by war, violence and loss. When Jimmy’s generation grew up they likely played among the rubble, in bombed-out buildings and bomb shelters. Looking wider, you could view mod culture’s obsession with neatness as an attempt to impose order on a chaotic world.

At the end, Jimmy survives, or so it seems. His ‘quadrophenia’ has stabilised for the time being, but ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ remains an aspiration only.

Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet is intense, exciting and very moving.

Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet is showing at The Lowry until Saturday 19 July. Details of future performances can be found here.

Harry Dickson 2: The Court of Terror

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Harry Dickson 2: The Court of Terror

Script by Luana Vergari and Doug Headline, from a story by Jean Ray

Artwork by Onofrio Catacchio

Cinebook, 2025

Base human venality and weird, supernatural elements. What’s not to like?

What happens here is that a millionaire, one Frederic Hamilton, has a series of convulsive dreams where he appears before a court of hooded judges. Their hoods are a deathly white and they look like all the world like phantom executioners. The judgement they deliver is clear and unequivocal. He, Frederic Hamilton, must return his all ill-gotten gains, the bulk of his wealth, or face summary justice. Give us your money, is what they are saying: extortion is the name of the game.

But the trappings are terrifying. Each dream is extraordinarily vivid and more extreme than the last, so that our millionaire finds himself anxiously dwelling on what is to come. Fearing for his life, Frederic Hamilton goes to the police but they are no use, at least to start with: can’t help you mate, we don’t have the resources, see a therapist. That’s their response. It is a case beyond their ken. And then Harry Dickson becomes involved and matters become less murky.

This is one of those crime dramas (The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic par excellence of the sub-genre) where base human venality is mixed up with weird, altered states of consciousness and even supernatural elements. Harry Dickson, together with his zesty assistant Tom Wills, must disentangle a vicious web of deceit.

I relished Jean Ray’s labyrinthine mystery as adapted by Luana Vergari and Doug Headline, and Onofrio Catacchio’s atmospheric artwork held my attention throughout.

That Mysterion makes an entrance here is hardly surprising since he, like Moriarty, uses bastardly criminals as his henchmen, turfing out his terrible schemes, subcontracting the latest dastardly enterprise. He always retains, mind, a presiding agency and wields power from a distance.

At the close of the story, Mysterion seems a goner. Has he gone for good? We’ll see soon enough…

The publisher’s description of Harry Dickson 2: The Court of Terror can be read here.

Trio Concept

February 28, 2026March 31, 2026 ~ P.P.O. Kane ~ Leave a comment

Trio Concept

Brahms-Saal, Musikverein

23 February 2026

A perfect pairing.

Not every concert stops you in your tracks. Some few are excellent and most are pleasant, perfectly fine. You go home, make yourself a brew, turn in for the night. This one, though, this one will live long in the memory.

The concert featured music old and new, but at its core it paired Rachmaninoff’s early Trio élégiaque in G minor with Weinberg’s Piano Trio in A major; and whoever conceived of that pairing deserves proper credit, because the connection between those two works is not just musical, it is philosophical. Rachmaninoff wrote his single-movement Trio in 1892, as a young man precociously fluent in the language of grief, pouring out melody like he couldn’t stop himself if he tried. Weinberg composed his Trio in 1945, amid the wreckage of a world that had tried to destroy everything he came from. Fifty-odd years apart, a Russian romantic and a Polish-Jewish exile sheltering in Moscow, and yet both men knew that music gives voice to grief when words cannot.

Rachmaninoff’s work was played with a genuine tenderness that never tipped over into sentimentality. Lorenzo Nguyen on piano had the measure of it from the off, shaping those long, arching phrases without pushing, letting them breathe. Francesco Massimino on cello brought a warmth to the lower register and Edoardo Grieco, the violinist, floated above it all with a tone that was full throated and clear. Working as one, they found the work’s strange, suspended quality; it was as though they’d come upon an hitherto unknown treasure. Rachmaninoff’s work is not quite a lament and not definite enough to be called an elegy, instead it hovers uneasily between the two. Call it an inarticulate howl of anguish.

As for Weinberg’s masterpiece, which we heard last of all, following Notturno, a new work by Giulia Lorusso, this is where the evening proper announced itself. His Trio is a trickier beast: more angular, more ambivalent in its harmonies, more precarious, what with that unmistakable Weinberg habit of starting somewhere warm and pulling the rug out without warning. The musicians clearly loved this music, and that showed. The scherzo was taken at a pace that was almost alarming, executed with a precision that never felt mechanical, and the slow movement made you pause completely. Weinberg’s music carries a hefty weight, the weight of history you might say, and all three musicians understood that. There were no histrionics, no overplaying. Just the notes, the score, and what the notes mean.

As a venue, Vienna’s Brahms Saal was an ideal setting for a concert such as this one. It is intimate without being cramped, ornate and courtly, and the acoustics are so natural and warm that the instruments sound as in bygone days. You are sat close to the stage, a few feet away from the musicians, near enough to see the cellist’s bow arm working. For chamber music especially, it’s bang on. There’s a reason people travel halfway across Europe for an evening in that room. On this occasion, it was worth every mile.

Details of future concerts at the Musikverein can be found here.

This is about as violent, visceral and vicious as an opera as can be.

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Heat seeker under fire.

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The Messiah is my sister.

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Ancient magic and corkscrew technology.

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Danger immediate and far.

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What a spy believes, she sees.

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Nemesis is born.

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A plea for mercy is granted.

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Experiments in love.

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Fate and freedom.

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Paradise for some.

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Wounded Wanderer.

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Heavenly wake.

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High society rendered grand.

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Venetian vendettas.

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Who is Kathy’s Namibian nemesis?

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Dark Tourism.

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Sinister menace.

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Alpha in Beta mode.

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Gun Honey

Gun Honey: Blood for Blood

Gun Honey: Collision Course

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Once lost, trust cannot entirely return.

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Saturday matinee thrills.

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A nuanced existential lesson.

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An exhilarating journey with very many sharp, witty touches.

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Nature strikes back.

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The Red Shoes: A Sumptuous Serenade for the Senses.

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The stark substance of classical tragedy.

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A monster who remembers that he once was a man.

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A Puritan warrior in an Age of Empire.

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Love romantic and sensual.

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An Evening of Contrasts: Nordic Atmosphere Meets Classical Refinement.

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Mystery remains.

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A stark battle between Good and Evil.

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Life in an English Village.

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Primitive privilege.

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An Evening of French Brilliance and Russian Fire.

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You must change your life.

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A feast for ballet purists and metalheads alike.

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Deft storytelling and stylish, sophisticated artwork.

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